Blood Stream Infections (BSI) in your unit

Specialties Critical

Published

We have recently had a spike in the number of BSI's in our Trauma unit. We have implemented several changes to reduce the bsi's but we have not seen much of a change. Currently, we bathe all patients with a central line in Hibiclens with disposable wipes, we have a trained team to perform dressing changes on the lines, and we have of course been following standards like scrubbing the hub for 15 seconds. What are some methods that some of y'all have been using to prevent bsi's?

Specializes in CCU, CVICU, Cath Lab, MICU, Endoscopy..
"Scrub the hub" for 15 seconds with alcohol, change IV tubing and caps q4days unless it's propofol (q12 hours), change central line dressings q7days unless there is a gauze over the insertion site then the gauze must be removed within 24 hours.

How is your units hand washing compliance?

How do you draw cultures? Assuming you know they aren't coming back just contaminated.

Our cultures are drawn sterile, chlorohexidine, sterile towels sterile gloves, sterile field. That was decided after too much contamination. So far it has been working great.

0 Votes

My SICU has had 2 CLABSIs in the past 12 months and both have been traced back to insertion.

We implement Curos caps and Bio-patch dressings. We use sterile technique when changing the dressings.

Also one thing to watch out for is the "hubbing out" of the lines, be sure to the remind the physician to leave you enough exposed catheter to place the bio-patch.

I wish I could say we change all lines q7days and all femoral lines after the initial 24h but we do not and we still have an almost 0% infection rate.

0 Votes

Does anyone know what the bio-patches are inoculated with?

0 Votes
Specializes in ICU.
Does anyone know what the bio-patches are inoculated with?

I believe it's chlorhexadine.

0 Votes
Specializes in MICU.

We do pretty much everything people have already said (sterile drsg change w/chlorhexadine scrub, biopatch, etc). We also just got swab caps, which are impregnanted with alcohol. They screw onto unused claves so scrubbing with an alcohol swab doesn't need to be done. They have to be changed every time they are taken off.

I wish we had a policy to d/c fem lines! They are so gross- once I had a pt have a large bm and the open claves were in the poop! Gross!

0 Votes
+ Add a Comment